Why does this generation seek a sign?
Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given…” Mk. 8:12
For the pastoral theologian, or even the casual observer making comment, sin is the most difficult topic to approach. Typically people don’t want to hear about sin; we don’t want to have our faults pointed out. In this, I am no different from anyone else. Yet I have learned that growth can come most easily when I am made aware of my failings.
In most situations I am not one who likes to form a rash judgment of others—especially where what we ordinarily consider to be sin is concerned. I am one to forebear, and to forgive easily when it comes to the social sins of our generation. However, on a deeper level I see a greater and more troubling reality at work, and the rejection of traditional moral values is only a symptom of a greater darkness at work among us. In the case of the greatest sin we are identical to the generation whom Jesus rebuked for seeking a sign. Even if a sign were given, we would deny it outright. The greatest sin is our blindness to the reality of God’s love, and that which blinds us is our own sense of being right.
The psalmist asks
“Why do you recite my statutes,
and profess my covenant with your mouth
Though you hate discipline
and cast my words behind you?”
His question, it appears, is addressed to those who make the claim to righteousness; that is, it is addressed to those who recite the statutes of God and profess his covenant. Could it be that the greatest sinners are not those whose lifestyles we find repugnant because they reject our values concerning marriage or sexuality, but rather those who have become so blind to the presence of God that they demand a sign from the creator standing in their midst?
Years ago I remember a young divinity student who questioned a professor in regard to sin. “What is sin?” he asked, “I find it difficult to find and precisely name sin in our day and age.” At the time I failed to realize the depth of his question, which was taken to be rhetorical by the professor. Many years later now, I have not forgotten it. I still ponder the question “What is sin in our day and age.” Certainly I cannot easily nod to the setting up of one’s own morals against the biblical and magisterial teachings, nor can I pretend that the materialism of the world today is innocent. Sin is a reality among us and undoubtedly we live amid a generation that has accepted the temptation of godlessness wholeheartedly. However, we must ask what it is that opened the door to the great culmination of evil in our day.
Although God continues to call prophets to preach among us, rather than meet their words with joyful repentance and prayer, we reject them outright. They offend our sensibilities and our allegiances. We hear them only as a din of offensive proclamations against our will to determine our own direction, while Christ, in contrast, calls his disciples to follow rather than to state that they are righteous already. We seek a sign but we find nothing offered.
Often repentance may consist only in a shift in our attitude: I am resolved to stand for true righteousness regardless of what it may cost me; however, I still am not disturbed that an entire generation is rejecting the values of historical Christianity. It is only for me a challenge to find meaning in it, for my faith tells me that God will never forsake us nor will he leave us. True righteousness is peacemaking and healing. Righteousness loves even when love is rejected and called “shameful” because it demands that we make peace and offer healing to a broken and war-torn world. There is no need for a sign when the greatest sign has already been given. Our response, our correct attitude, is to look deep and root out the source of sin.
Yes, and the other half of it all is that Jesus did not wallop anyone right off the bat, He spoke first to everyone's better nature, with love (like those in RCIA do), but amazingly so, considering He is the only one Who has ever truly known anyone's sins for real.
The Baptist and the Boanerges were expecting quite a different Messiah, as was Saul, no doubt, as were apparently many priests and nuns and family and community..all so very quick to point out wrongs as being the meat of the thing. Little did we know that the Jesus we'd encounter in the Bible, in His own words, might be very different than the one we'd come to only fear. Jesus knew that no one runs toward a whip-cracking Saviour. He took it a step further to underline that He came that we may have life. None of the Law was lost, but He fulfilled the Law by giving it a proper Heart at last. "Caught" in sin, He asked a sinful soul if anyone had condemned her, and again later showed those with scales, still, that a stone even in the self-righteous hand is still a stone, as St. Stephen can well attest.
Jesus always cautioned against sin, always said hwo deadly it is, but what He asked for, specifically asked, was that we love one another. He never veered from that, but rather, made it a new commandment, because He knew it was easier for a fallen people to not love. "Love one another, as I have loved you." Unfortunately, His love is truly not something I ever heard much of while growing up, not at home, and not at Mass.
My generation went looking for love wrongly at times, but it went looking because there had to be something better than the headmaster's hellfire that saw the sin but never the rest of the person.. and many of us could only think so because we had a CCD teacher, or perhaps a devout grandmother, who with a Godly twinkle in their eye did what well-meaning but deadly others should've done first.
Combox sins are often an acidic response to acid, the lay blind leading the lay blind. A priest is to whom we confess, and he bases his words of correction on words of one's confession.
The Church to come overcorrected for my generation's beckoning with vinegar, and seemed to have avoided speaking of sin, and sin unfortunately took deeper root for a time. Yet some greater balance must've been found, for She draws Protestant pastors still, even in the midst of horrendous scandal; many parishes are absolutely bursting at the seams; people beg for their parish churches and schools to remain open; seminaries are not closing even though they are teaching of sin once again; the Church's World Youth Day draws a multitude unseen anywhere else; there were the last time I looked more than 12,000 deacons in the U.S.; and Eucharistic Adoration is growing.
If we need signs, those 7 ought to suffice. It would be nice if they were worldwide signs.
Posted by: C | February 12, 2007 at 07:34 AM